Or Whatever
by JibbityJibJob
Summary: "Her jaw is tight and her nostrils are flared, and you realize that Beca is totally fighting against herself right now. She wants to run, but she needs you to understand something." A tasteless joke courtesy of Fat Amy results in Chloe learning a little bit more about Beca. (This story revolves around self-harm. There is nothing descriptive, but it is the main topic.)
1. Chapter 1

You notice the squint and hesitation when Fat Amy makes an offhanded remark that has most of the Bellas chuckling through mumbled utterances of, "Oh nooo." You wouldn't have seen it if you hadn't been studying her face, but you were and you did. A second later she's smiling again, but it's stiff and she's no longer participating in the conversation.

You've seen her with all manner of emotion flitting across her face, but this is different. It seems personal. How you know this is anyone's guess. It's just an instinct you've developed over the past couple of years.

You know Beca Mitchell inside and out. What makes her tick. What ticks her off. Which smiles are dangerous and which jaw twitches mean laughter is about to bubble up from her belly. You know that for all the hardness she shields herself with, she's actually the most thoughtful, kind, honest person you've ever met. You know that she's a deep thinker. You know that she's smart. You know that _she_ knows she's smart.

You walk your fingers across her palm under the table, friendly, letting her know that you can see that she's about done here, and she gives you a soft smile and a little squeeze in return.

And then there are classes to get to and homework to be completed, so your band of merry Bellas scatters across campus, and you let go of the squint and the hesitation in favour of enjoying fifteen extra minutes alone with your favourite person.

It only takes a minute for Beca to let her face relax into a stoney neutral expression. This isn't uncommon. When not actively emoting, Beca tends to look like the least approachable person in the world. You kind of love that she's comfortable enough with you to default back to that without worrying about whether or not you'll take it as a sign of anything other than exactly what it is: a default setting that is in no way indicative of her current mood or train of thought.

She's explained it to you before. She's told you about growing up with people, usually adults, telling her to smile and demanding that she tell them what the problem is. The first time you'd bitten your lip and tried to respect her gloomy silence by way of not talking to her at all, she'd asked you what was wrong.

" _Dude, this is not a comfortable silence. What's wrong?"_

" _What? Nothing! ….I thought maybe_ you _had something wrong."_

She'd look at you, studied your face for the briefest of moments before shooting a small smile at you.

" _Nothing's wrong. I'm just one of those people that doesn't really engage a whole lot. Like, I'm available to you. I know I don't look it... You just have to start it."_

You'd made a face that she had somehow decrypted before the words could travel from your brain to your mouth.

" _I know I look upset or whatever. Half the time I'm just, like, in my head having an epic NERF battle or something. Totally lost in some kind of adventure. Seriously, just knock me back to reality. And if I'm actually not into talking, I'll let you know."_

" _You sure?"_

" _Dude, trust me."_

And that had been it. You've never let her silence deter you from talking to her again, and she's only ever told you she wanted to be left alone twice.

Which is why you bite your lip when Beca avoids your eyes and says she has to go do "something" that she didn't have any plans to do forty minutes ago when you'd asked her if she wanted to hang out after a super quick lunch with the Bellas.

And then she's swinging her backpack over one shoulder and tossing a few bills onto the table all in one fluid motion while turning to walk away.

"Wait! Beca!" You fumble through your bag for some cash of your own before jerking away from the table and taking long, hurried strides to catch up with her. "Beca!"

Beca stops walking and spins to look at you. "It's fine. I'm fine. We're good. Can I go?"

This is _not_ how you had planned to spend your afternoon. This is completely out of the ordinary. This is _confusing_.

"Beca, what just happened?"

There's a flash of tattooed headphones when she raises her hand to push her hair back. She looks harried and apologetic at the same time. Like she knows exactly what this looks like, and like she's not really happy about not being able to fake something else.

"Nothing." Her jaw is set, but her eyes are soft, pleading.

You step forward, completely bypassing the borders of her comfort zone, and gently take her wrist in your hand. "Beca. Hey, look at me." She swallows hard. "Beca….. Bec. What's up?"

She's worrying the inside of her bottom lip with her teeth, and you get the sudden feeling that this side of Beca, this hesitant, uncomfortable version of your best friend that you haven't interacted with in a long time, is an altogether new edition that you haven't knowingly encountered before.

She shakes her wrist loose from your fingers. "It's… Look, I don't want to lie to you, okay? But it's not…"

"Not what?"

She huffs in annoyance, though whether it's at herself or you, you're not sure. "I just didn't like Amy's joke, okay?"

Your head jerks back in surprise. Fat Amy has said _a lot_ of questionable things, and a lot of straight-up offensive things, but Beca has never reacted to any of it like this.

"Her joke?" You try to remember something specific that blurted its way out of Amy's mouth at lunch, but nothing stands out with a red flag attached. "Which joke?"

The muscles in Beca's jaw bunch up and relax a few times, like she's trying to make a decision.

"Hey," you say softly as you reach out to drag your fingers down her forearm and take her hand. "This is me. Safe place, right?" You hope you're handling this unknown Beca the right way. Her body language is practically screaming at you to tread lightly, to go for comfort rather than force.

A quick and heavy breath rushes in, then out through Beca's nose, and she finally lets her eyes lock with yours if only for the two seconds it takes her to make up her mind.

You lean forward ever so slightly in anticipation of finally understanding what the hell is going on.

When she finally speaks, Beca's words are packed tightly together and fall out of her mouth almost too quickly for you to catch.

"What she said about that guy blowing her off because he probably had to go home and cut himself. That's… That wasn't cool. That's not a joke."

Beca's eyes are blazing, and they're boring into yours like your reaction to her statement has the potential to ruin absolutely everything the two of you have built over the course of your friendship. Her jaw is tight and her nostrils are flared, and you realize that Beca is totally fighting against herself right now. She wants to run, but she needs you to understand something.

You squeeze her hand. "Okay. Okay, I can understand why that…" but you don't understand. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. Like, I mean I _understand_ why that's not a good joke, but I don't understand why _this_ is the insensitive Fat Amy joke that's gotten to you."

She's all but gnawing on her lip now.

"I do that–I _did_ that. I _used_ to do that. And just… it's not a joke, okay?" She's looking everywhere but at you, and you wish she'd settle for a moment.

"Look at me?" She does. "You hurt yourself?"

"Yeah. I mean I have. I did. Before."

"Before what?"

"Nothing. Just _before_. Before I now _don't_."

You don't know what to say. You're an adult. A very young adult, but an adult nonetheless, and this is something you've never dealt with before.

"So–"

Beca pulls her hand loose from your grip and adjusts her backpack on her shoulder. "Listen, can we just forget about it? It's not a big deal. I don't want–," she takes a breath, exhales through her nose, and continues a bit more slowly. "I don't _need_ to talk about it. It was just a really shitty _non_ -joke and I didn't like it and it's one of the very few things I'm actually sensitive about. Okay?" She starts to turn away. "Can we drop it?"

"Wait. God, Beca, _stop_ walking away." You pull her back around, gently, kindly, and take hold up her upper arms. "We can stop talking about it, but I'm not going to forget." You raise your chin to prevent the interjection that's sitting on her lips from being released. "No, just let me say this, and then we can move on, okay? I'm not going to 'just forget about this.' This is important. And _you_ are important to _me_ , so... Give me a second."

Beca's posture has relaxed a bit, though she's still tense through her jaw and hands, like she's resigned herself to her fate, like she's been here before, and she's prepared to hear one thing, but is hoping for another.

Your eyes roam across her face, and you squeeze her arms once before locking your eyes on hers. This is important. You need her to see and hear your sincerity.

"I can't tell you that I understand how you feel right now. And I can't pretend to know what it is that makes you hurt yourself–"

"Used to!" She blurts it out.

"Right. Why you _used to_ hurt yourself. I've never, well… It's not something…"

You huff in annoyance at your sudden inarticulateness.

"Beca, I love you, and I want you to be happy and safe. And I want good things for you. I'm not… You look like you're ready for the worst right now, and I'm _not_ going anywhere, okay? This doesn't change anything. I mean, obviously it changes a little bit because now I know this about you and it's inevitably going to inform how I interact with you…"

You've opened some kind of ramble vault in your brain, and you force yourself to stop and breathe.

"Sorry. I'm trying to say that it's okay. That _we_ are okay. And you can talk to me. About this. Or anything, obviously, you know that. But this too."

She's looking at you with an incredibly uncomfortable look on her face.

"Dude. That's really, um, sweet? Thank you. I'm good, though. I'm… I'm okay. Y'know?"

"Your reaction to what Amy said, and the fact that I had to physically keep you here, says otherwise."

She squints at you like you're the most annoying-yet-endearing person ever. "Fine. I'm not, y'know, _okay_ or whatever, but I'm _fine_. Right now, I'm fine. I'm good. I'm a little off kilter, but I'll be fine."

Now it's your turn to squint.

"Honestly, Chloe. I mean… Okay." She seems to settle into herself, like she's planting her feet to get a more solid footing to support herself through what she's about to say.

"I love you too."

It comes out mumbled and it makes you smile. The mumble and the sentiment. She rolls her eyes at your grin.

"And _because_ of that, the loving or _whatever_ ," her eyebrow quirks upwards as if to challenge you to question the flippant addition _, "_ I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going to happen from here. Because I don't want you to be worried. Because now you know something, well, worrisome about me."

You blink slowly, tilting your head to the side just slightly. "Okay?"

Her eyebrow drops back into seriousness.

"What happens?"

"What happens is that I'm going to pull into myself. I'm going to be quiet for a while. Maybe a few days, I don't know. It's not an exact science. I'm going to be broody and dark. Shut up."

She pokes your shoulder in response to your smirk at the idea that she's going to _get_ broody and dark. You know, as opposed to her usual sunny demeanor.

"I'm gonna withdraw, Chloe. Okay? And you don't need to worry that anything bad is happening. I'm just…" Her hands twist in the air in front of her, like she's trying to grab the correct descriptor. "Recalibrating? I'm just unwinding. Because I'm very tense right now."

"That's what's going to happen?"

"Yes." She nods decisively. "That's what's going to happen."

"And you're okay."

"Yes. I will be breathing my way through white-knuckling my through the next few days, but I'm okay."

You don't like that sound of that. White-knuckling her way through. That sounds, well, _not okay_ , to be honest.

"And how will I know when it's okay to talk to you again?"

"Oh, dude! No, you can totally talk to me. It's just… I'm gonna seem not okay. Like, you can totally hang out in my room or whatever. Don't kid glove me."

 _Kid glove?_

"Kid glove?"

"Y'know, don't– I'm not _fragile_. You won't break me. Treat me like normal. I don't know. _Tackle_ hug me. Make fun of my height even though you're _literally_ only two inches taller than me. Force feed me disgusting green smoothies. Steal my headphones." She locks her eyes onto yours. "Just be you."

You can do that. You can be you. You can be the you you've always been with this ridiculous woman. Slightly altered by new information, but you all the same.

And then you throw yourself at her in a tackle hug _lite_ , and she chuckles as she pats you on the back.

She blows a chunk of your hair out of her mouth, and says, "All right. I have to go to class. I'll see you at the house tonight." She pats your back again before ever so gently shoving you away. Like normal.

And then you're parting ways, and you decide that you don't feel like going to your Russian Lit lecture. You want to go home and stare at the ceiling above your bed for a little while. To process everything you just learned about Beca. To marvel at how open and steady she was. To smile your secret sad smile because this revelation has cracked your heart, and you need to do some breathing of your own if you're going to be able to avoid donning the so-called kid gloves.

So you skip class and navigate your way through your brain jumble so you can get to the other side before Beca returns from her own day of schooling. Because even though she hadn't said it, Beca Mitchell needs you to be normal with an extra side of understanding softness.

And that is what you will be. Because you love her. Or whatever.


	2. Chapter 2

Beca stood in front of the door, staring at the sparkly purple C sticky tacked just above eye level. She'd already been standing there for a good three minutes, and she was still pacing back and forth in her mind, flip flopping on whether or not she should knock.

Four hours ago she'd shared a really big fact about herself with Chloe, and she'd spent the majority of those four hours gnawing on her lip while her mind raced through what felt like every possible resulting scenario. So far Chloe had pushed her away, taken to watching her like a hawk, been flippant and uncaring, quietly spread the news amongst the rest of the Bellas for Beca's own good (that one had caused a wave of panic to cascade through her chest), and pretended to forget that their entire conversation had even taken place. All of these outcomes found homes amongst other, more ridiculously improbable possibilities.

Not only was Beca thinking about what might happen between her and Chloe, but her brain was doing that stupid thing where every third thought was about how easy it would be to relieve some of her stress and anxiety by breaking the promise she'd made to herself a whopping five hundred and twenty-three days ago. (Five hundred and twenty- _four_ if she made it through the next eight-ish hours.)

She needed a distraction. Like so many times before, she needed _her_ distraction. Only now the person she'd come to rely on for that very thing was a big part of why she needed distracting at all.

Beca had reasoned herself into and out of turning to Chloe all afternoon. Chloe had said she'd be there for her, but Beca'd been on the receiving end of that line before. It was nice to hear, but it always came with a niggling doubt. A hitch in the plan. That little voice in her head that told her to take a step back because _this person can't know what they're actually getting themselves into, can they?_

She'd always been protective of the people she cared about. It often resulted in a catch-22: the only people she'd ever felt comfortable with _maybe_ sharing this part of herself with were exactly the people she would never want to burden with what was, in all honesty, a fairly heavy load to bear.

Telling someone you used to hairspray your eyebrows into spiky configurations was much different than telling someone that you intentionally _hurt_ yourself to feel _better_.

They're not the same, not even close to comparable. And this secret, this _habit_ , was not something Beca liked to force upon people. (From both a privacy and an _I don't want to be a burden_ point of view.) And that was another catch. How could she let someone choose for themselves whether or not they wanted to know that part of who she was without disclosing to them the nature of the thing?

She couldn't. And Beca had never found a way to reliably identify those individuals who would react well to such information. Hell, she didn't even know what constituted reacting well to begin with. She didn't know what she wanted from someone in this kind of situation.

And so there she stood, stock still and staring, wavering between wanting to knock and wanting to turn around, waiting for her mind to quit being such a dick and just make a damn decision already.

The need to make that decision was unceremoniously stripped away by the sudden opening of the door. As lost as she'd been in her thoughts, Beca hadn't heard Chloe's soft footfalls as she'd approached the door, nor had she heard her breathing on the other side as she'd waited for Beca to announce her arrival.

"Hey," Chloe said as she stepped forward. Her eyes filled the space that the C once occupied, and Beca felt her throat gurgle as she tried and failed to respond. "Are you okay?"

Beca tilted her head to the right to try to clear her thoughts. She toyed with the leather cuff on her right wrist. "Yeah. No. I–" she snagged her bottom lip between her teeth. "I am…" she squinted, still struggling with two very strong and opposite urges. "I want– I **need** you to distract me." Her shoulders jerked upwards ever so slightly, as if to say, _yeah, Beca Mitchell needs something and there's nothing I can do about it_. "Please."

Chloe took in Beca's posture. She was tense and, Chloe thought, on the cusp of becoming twitchy.

"Okay." She stepped aside and gestured for Beca to cross over the threshold separating the hallway and her bedroom. "What kind of distraction?"

Beca dropped her bag on the floor beside Chloe's desk, then dropped herself into the wheelie chair in front of it. Running her fingers through her hair, she watched Chloe situate herself on her bed. "I don't know. Like, a distraction. A normal distraction?"

Chloe smiled. "A normal distraction, huh?"

"Yeah. Like usual. Like always."

Chloe's eyebrows pulled together in thought, and Beca sighed.

"You've been my distraction for, like, two years. You're very good at it."

"Am I?"

"You are. Excellent, even." Beca's eyes widened to match the dramatic emphasis of her next words. "You're doing it _right_. _now_."

Playing along with her best friend's seemingly carefree attitude, Chloe gasped and pressed the fingers of her right hand to her chest. "Am I really?" Her nose scrunched up in what Beca had come to recognize as a sure sign of Chloe's nonchalant acceptance of her own awesomeness. "I _am_ good!"

Beca smirked. "You really are." And nodded. " _So_ good."

Both women chuckled.

Chloe sobered and bit her lip.

"Do you want to talk about anything?"

"Chloe!" Beca drew out the second syllable, clinging to the ease of the previous playfulness while letting her head fall backwards with a huff. She crossed her arms over her face, not bothering to move them to prevent her next words from coming out muffled. "It doesn't work as a distraction if you make reference to the thing from which you are distracting me."

The beauty, Chloe thought, of not previously knowing that she was helping Beca by functioning as a distraction was that she _did not know_ she was filling that role. It was like being told that you can feel your tongue touching the roof of your mouth. It's such a normal part of existing that you paid it no mind until your brain was forced to acknowledge it. And then all you can feel is all the ways in which you mouth feels full when there's nothing in it.

In short, Chloe didn't know how to purposefully distract Beca. At least not when Beca _knew_ that Chloe was intentionally distracting her. (Chloe was very good at distracting people, thank you very much. Very good in a variety of ways.)

Clearing her throat, Chloe tapped her fingers against her thigh and eyed Beca.

"How do you _want_ to be distracted? I don't know about you, but _I_ am very aware of what's happening here." She'd said it softly, her inflection somewhere between 'I'll follow your lead' and 'please just tell me how to help you.'

"Oh, believe me, I'm extremely of aware. Very, very aware. So aware, in fact," Beca said, "that I need to be rendered unaware." She squinted at her own lack of eloquence.

Chloe blinked once.

"D'you wanna make out?"

"Oh my God! Dude, no!"

The look on Beca's face, coupled with her shocked reply, sent Chloe into a fit of giggles that had her flat on her back in under two seconds. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered whether she should be offended by her best friend's vehemence, but she brushed the intrusive thought aside as Beca's own hiccuping laughter invaded her ears.

The sudden weight of a carelessly self-tossed body landing on her bed, as tiny as that body was, bounced her onto her side, and when she opened her eyes she was nearly nose to nose with a breathless and ruddy-faced Beca.

Chloe reached up to take a long section of Beca's hair into her hand, and as she twisted it around her fingers, she allowed herself to stare long enough to be caught when Beca opened her eyes.

They held each other's eyes for long seconds until Beca's face relaxed, then by-passed settling into a neutral state and moved towards something more troubled. There was an open sadness in Beca's eyes that Chloe hadn't had the displeasure of witnessing before that moment. It was as though a final barrier had been dropped. Like Beca was too tired to maintain her carefully constructed facade.

She let go of Beca's hair in favour of pressing the tip of her index finger against the creases marring the spot between Beca's eyes, as though that simple gesture could relieve some of what she knew was building up inside of her best friend's mind. She tracked her finger with her eyes as she tried to smooth away Beca's anxieties.

"Chlo?"

It was barely a whisper, and Chloe hummed in response, letting her focus drift back to Beca's eyes.

"I'm not okay."

Chloe felt the corners of her mouth pull downward at how tiny Beca's voice had become. She wasn't sure what the right response was to this confession, but her instincts were corralling her in one specific direction.

Scooting closer, Chloe put one arm around Beca's neck and let her other hand seek out and find cold fingers to tangle with.

She rested her forehead against Beca's.

"I'm right here."

Beca squeezed the fingers laced with hers.

"I know," she said, letting out a shaky breath. "Thank you."


	3. Chapter 3

Raised voices floating up the stairs to her bedroom was rarely enough to fully distract Chloe from whatever was occupying her focus, whether it was homework or catching up on trashy reality television. More often than not the cause of those raised voices was someone finishing a box of someone else's favourite cereal or, a more likely scenario, the Bellas working each other up into a chaotic storm of excitement about something as simple as glow in the dark mini golf.

Pausing the video playing on her laptop, Chloe listened for signs of intervention being required. Amy was definitely taking part in whatever debate was happening down there. Amy and Cynthia-Rose and….. Beca?

That _was_ rare. Beca tended more towards standing out of flail range and letting the girls argue or squeal themselves back to quietude.

That was really all the impetus Chloe needed to abandon Real Housewives of Little Rock in favour of making her way towards the kitchen for a firsthand look at what was going on.

Halfway down the stairs and it was becoming clear that there was a shirt somehow involved. A shirt, touching, and flinching? What?

The sounds of struggling accompanied by Beca nearly screaming to be let go of had Chloe gripping the banister and watching her feet as she descended the stairs two at a time.

Her head snapped up at what she heard next.

"Jesus, Beca! Did you jello wrestle with a puma?"

Something akin to a lead weight dropped into Chloe's stomach. She collected herself at the bottom of the stairs before entering the kitchen.

"What's going on?"

The occupants of the kitchen froze. They all recognized the hard edge in her voice, though only two of the three girls looked back at her with guilt on their faces. The third looked ready to either explode or crumble as she took advantage of the distraction Chloe's presence provided.

"Beca! Wait!" Cynthia-Rose bent to pick up a shirt from the floor. "Shit."

But Beca was already thumping up the stairs. When her bedroom door slammed shut, Chloe whirled around to squint at the two remaining Bellas.

Her mind was racing, trying to fit bits and pieces of information into some semblance of order.

Two weeks ago Beca had emerged from her week-long retreat into worrisome solitude. Exactly what Beca said would happen had happened. She'd withdrawn into herself and become broodier than was usual. And while she'd allowed Chloe to hang out in her bedroom (and had spent many quiet hours in Chloe's room over the course of the week), Beca hadn't opened up any further than she had that first afternoon when they had huddled together on Chloe's bed.

Chloe really, really did _not_ want to jump to conclusions, but her brain was lighting up a path that led directly to an idea that had her nearly itching to race back up the stairs to get to Beca.

Instead, she threw one hand out in front of her body, a gesture of extreme irritation that any Bella would recognize in even the dimmest lighting.

"What the _hell_ is going on?"

There was a beat of silence.

"Amy?"

Amy pursed her lips. "Aaaah… well…. see…." The stretching out of her vowels indicated very clearly how uncomfortable Amy was with explaining her own actions.

With a roll of her eyes, Cynthia-Rose took up the role of storyteller.

"Beca came in and I smacked her on the shoulder like, 'Hey man,' y'know? And she practically bit through her lip, like it hurt, and I swear, Chloe, I didn't even hit her that hard!" Cynthia-Rose's eyes were wide in an effort to convey just how _not hard_ she had hit Beca.

Chloe quirked an eyebrow and nodded for Cynthia-Rose to continue.

"And then _Amy_ ," she threw a glare at the Australian, "practically pounced at the opportunity to disrobe–"

"Excuse you!" Amy interrupted. "I did not _pounce_. DJ Tiny Tot was acting all weird, so I started up our usual game of Remove Beca's Clothing– What? It's a thing," this was directed at Chloe and her look of disbelief, "and she flipped out."

"Um, yeah, I'd lose my shit too if some chick tried to wrestle my shirt off," Cynthia-Rose argued back.

Amy coughed. "I doubt it."

"Enough!" Chloe cut them both off with one hand slicing through the air in front of them. "Let me… Ugh. Let me get this straight. You, Cynthia-Rose, hit Beca–"

"Not hard!"

"–and it hurt her. And then _you_ , Amy, _somehow_ decided that it was a good idea to, what, strip her for evidence?"

Amy looked everywhere other than at Chloe. "I'm just gonna…" and then she was gone.

"Listen," Cynthia-Rose said, "it's none of my business, okay? But Amy, as shitty as this all is, was only kind of exaggerating about the puma thing."

Chloe bit her lip in an attempt not to react to hearing that bit again.

"Just… It's no one's business except Beca's, but you're her best friend, and your face is... So I'm just gonna give you her shirt," she tossed Chloe the plaid button-up she'd picked up not three minutes earlier, "and let you do your thing."

They stood in silence for several seconds until Chloe swallowed hard and turned to go.

"And Chloe?"

Chloe paused, not turning around to look at Cynthia-Rose, opting instead to at least try to keep her traitorously expressive face from confirming or starting any rumours about Beca's secrets.

"Tell Beca… If you think it's cool, tell her that– Shit, just tell her that I got her back. If she needs it."

"I will, Cee. Thanks."

And with that Chloe was taking the stairs two at a time for the second time in under ten minutes. She didn't know what she was going to do when she got to Beca's room. She didn't know what to expect when she knocked on her friend's door. She didn't know if she'd be invited in or sent away or ignored entirely.

A few deep and slow breaths was all she allowed herself before she drummed her fingers against Beca's door. There was no answer.

"Beca?" She knocked gently with her knuckles this time. "Beca, it's me. Can I come in?"

Usually when a person didn't answer a knock at their door, Chloe was polite enough to take the hint and go away. This time, though, the lack of response was under very different circumstances than she had encountered in the past.

With that in mind, Chloe opened the door and poked her head into Beca's bedroom. A familiar scene greeted her.

Beca was flat on her back on her bed with her headphones over her ears, eyes closed, and fingers tapping out a beat against her stomach. She'd changed into the raggedy hoodie from her days as a high school AV nerd.

She could hear whatever Beca was listening to leaking out of her headphones. It wasn't clear, but Chloe could tell it was something heavy on electric guitar as she carefully lowered herself to sit at the end of the bed.

"Go away, Chloe."

Beca's eyes remained closed and her voice was devoid of any of the warmth it usually held when addressing the redhead.

Chloe tried not to take it personally, tried to keep it in context, but it stung to be so easily dismissed when all she wanted to do was, at the very least, _be_ there. She would've gladly sat in silence, moved as far away from Beca as the dimensions of the room would allow, covered herself in blankets to all but erase the visual evidence of her presence.

"Bec."

No response.

She toyed with the shirt she still held. Wrapping and unwrapping the sleeves around her hands, Chloe let her mind flit from thought to thought, not trying to pin down any specific feeling or idea. It was repetitious at best.

She'd thought that Beca had handled whatever needed handling. She'd thought that Beca had righted herself and was back to being okay. She'd assumed a week, as Beca had said, was all her friend needed to shake off the effects of Amy's crappy joke. She'd thought that the past two weeks, though not completely tension free, had been proof positive of Beca's continued, _successful_ wrangling of whatever it was inside of her that found comfort in pain.

Mostly she'd thought Beca would come to her if it all got to be too much.

They'd had a moment, hadn't they? Beca had shared something scary, had been open and honest, had told Chloe that she was her main source of distraction when things got tough.

The absence of tinny noise to her left alerted Chloe to the fact that Beca's headphones had become nothing more than a convenient prop.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

Beca's chest hitched. Opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling, she said, "You need to go, Chloe."

"Why?"

"Because I need to breathe. I need to… I need to be angry and upset. And I can't do that with you looking at me like I'm somehow broken."

Chloe's head jerked backwards. "Broken? What? I'm not looking at you like you're broken. You won't even look at _me_ , so how do you know how I'm looking at _you_?"

Dark blue eyes closed in a long blink before opening and sliding down, away from the ceiling and towards sky blue.

Chloe definitely did not look like someone who was feeling pity. She looked almost angry. _Offended_.

"Dude, you're _mad_ at me?"

"No! I'm not mad at you. I'm not anything _at_ you. I'm–," Chloe let out a throaty sound of frustration. "I'm _sad_. Okay?"

Beca blinked.

"I'm sad that my best friend, who, just so you know," there was definitely some snark in Chloe's voice now, "I _love_ and _care about_ and would do almost anything for, is _hurting_. I'm sad and angry and really, really lost. Because I don't know how to help you. And I don't know if you not asking for help _is_ you asking for help. And I don't know how to do any of this!"

Beca sat up. "Chloe–"

"And!" Chloe held up a hand to halt Beca's interruption. "And I'm pissed off, Beca! I'm so super pissed that I missed all of this to begin with. I know you, Beca. Not a little bit, not pretty well. I _know_ you. So I missed all of this hurting that you're disturbingly good at hiding or shoving down or whatever, and then I went and missed it _again_ after I knew there was something to look for."

Beca tipped herself forward to crawl the short distance across the bed to kneel beside Chloe. She wrapped her arms around the redhead's shoulders and settled into a loose hug. "It's okay, Chlo."

Chloe deflated and leaned into her best friend. "I'm supposed to be consoling you, you know."

A short burst of air through her nose signaled Beca's wry amusement. "I've been living this for nearly a decade, Chloe. I'm pretty good at riding the roller coaster. You, however, didn't even get to strap yourself in before it took off."

"Is this why you didn't tell me?"

"Is what why I didn't tell you what?"

Tugging at the hem of Beca's shirt, Chloe shrugged. "Me freaking out. Is that why you didn't come to me? For distracting?"

"Oh." Beca sighed. "No. Or not really. Kind of. You're not freaking out. I've seen you freak out, and this is not that. I got tired. I got really tired of everything that goes into not–" She hesitated, taking a deep breath. "It takes a lot of effort to not hurt myself, Chloe. It's not something that's just running in the background. It's almost always at the front of my mind. Or close to it. And I get tired. And I was already getting tired before what happened with Amy, and… I just got tired. So I stopped trying."

Chloe had pulled away midway through Beca's answer, and the sad smile of resignation on her face was enough to make Chloe's throat tighten and her chest ache.

"I just want to hold onto you."

"Dude. Hold away."

"Yeah?"

Instead of answering, Beca took hold of Chloe's arms as she rocked backwards off her knees to return to her previously prone position. Chloe let Beca's momentum pull her down to land with her right arm and leg draped across Beca's body.

The silence was broken a few minutes later when Beca turned her face away from Chloe's hair so she wouldn't end up inhaling the ginger strands as she spoke.

"I'll talk about it If you want me to."

"I want you to. For you. Not for me."

"Okay."

"Whenever you're ready."

Beca pressed her cheek into Chloe's hair. To hide or for comfort, she didn't know. Either way, it helped as she talked about eighth grade and her freshman year of high school.

Chloe tightened her hold. Maybe that was all she could really do to help her best friend. Listening and holding on tight, and doing her best to let Beca know that those two things were available whenever and wherever they were needed.

That _she_ was always available.


	4. Chapter 4

She's a forward individual. She's full of flirtatious eyebrow quirks and knowing smirks, perfectly timed nibbles of her own bottom lip, and has been known to use non-verbal sounds of agreement to great effect. She's forward, but she's not reckless. Not with her affections, and certainly not with her heart. (Or the hearts of others.)

Chloe asks for what she wants, for the things she's curious about, for the attention she needs.

Chloe is forward, yes, but only when she's confident about the positive consequences of that forward behaviour. Sometimes she gets ahead of herself, but then that's more of a shifting away from **forward** and towards **overwhelmingly excited** about the prospect of something amazing happening.

And it can't be said that she's never unsure. She's unsure about a lot of things. Like how to ask her best friend if she's ever shown anyone the lasting evidence of her particular brand of coping. It's not so much the _how_ as it is a matter of _should_. As in, _should_ that be a thing she asks? Is that something she's _allowed_ to ask?

Beca takes that out of her hands, though, on a Wednesday night not long after most of the student population of Barden has returned from its collective winter break.

They're the only two Bellas in the house, the other girls having scattered across campus (or Atlanta itself) to welcome themselves back to school through the traditional means each had cooked up over the years.

"Can I ask you a kind of messed up question?"

The words drift up from further away than Chloe is subconsciously expecting. Raising her eyes from the magazine propped up against her knees, she finds Beca flat on her back with her head and most of her shoulders hanging over the edge of the bed they've set themselves up on. Her hands, fingernails sporting freshly chipped nail polish, are clutching at Chloe's comforter in such a way that makes it unclear whether she's holding on to keep herself from falling or to steel herself against rejection.

Chloe gets the feeling that this is going to be one of _those_ questions, the kind that is to be mentally prepared for, and so she sets her magazine aside and focuses her attention on her best friend.

"Sure."

She allows the silence that follows to linger, to thicken, past the threshold of what most would consider comfortable, and waits patiently for Beca's upside down thoughts to work themselves into coherence.

When the words come they're slow and a bit staggered, like she's still working out the kinks of the language, but she gets there eventually.

"Do you ever, like," Beca stops, and Chloe can almost hear her twisting her lips. "Scars."

That grabs Chloe's attention. Or it would have if she weren't already rapt.

"Do you ever wonder if I have scars?"

"Yes."

She doesn't hesitate in answering. There's no point, really. It would've come out eventually, and any kind of tip-toeing around on her part probably wouldn't do much to help move this conversation along.

And Beca doesn't hesitate in swinging herself back up to rest fully on the bed. Her eyes widen and lose focus at the sudden twirling of the room around her, and she gives her head a little shake to clear the cobwebs, but then she's making eye contact, and Chloe counts that as a good sign.

"Really?"

Her squinty delivery of this line almost makes Chloe laugh. "Of course," she says instead.

"Oh. Okay."

Chloe thinks she's probably derailed Beca's train of thought, answering promptly and in the positive as she has. The distinct lack of defensive body language coupled with her choice to remain upright is something Chloe takes to mean that it'd be okay, or at least not entirely inappropriate, to ask a pretty messed up question in return.

"Can I see?"

Dark blue eyes jerk away from electric blue, and eyebrows that were arched in easing surprise drop low as Beca's jaw tightens.

The answer is given more as a question than an affirmation, and it doesn't come as easily as this whole conversation seems to have started.

"Yes? Yes. Maybe. Uh…"

Chloe keeps her mouth shut and her gaze steady, waiting patiently for her best friend to work out what their next step is. She hopes Beca understands her request for what it is, but then even Chloe isn't quite sure about her motivation. She doesn't want to gawk, but she also doesn't want to catch a glimpse and then be shut out forever. Mostly, if she thought about it enough, it'd probably come to intent. She doesn't want to accidentally see something she now knows exists, and then have to step around it and have it affect the way she interacts with Beca. Or maybe that'd be _over_ thinking it. Maybe she's just curious. Whatever her reasons, Chloe is pretty sure there's no way to **actually** prepare for it if Beca settles on a yes.

It seems like she does.

Beca's not breathing heavily, but the measured inhale and exhale routine she's performing sure makes it sound like she is.

"Can we do this without feelings?"

The question throws Chloe, and it must show on her face because Beca's hands are fluttering in front of her a second later.

"To start? I mean, it's easier to… share when I detach."

That's a bit startling.

"Beca, you don't have to do this if you don't want you. At all. Like, seriously _don't_ if it's not okay," Chloe tells her. The last thing she wants is to make Beca feel like she **has** to roll up her sleeves or.. Well, _is_ it her sleeves that would be rolled up? Chloe hadn't really given it much thought. What if the marks on her arms that so shocked Amy and Cynthia-Rose before break were the first of their biologically geographical kind? She had no way of knowing, really.

"I want to." It comes out quickly, followed closely by a wince and an eye roll that halts at the apex of the movement as though Beca's trying to see her own eyebrows. "I don't _not_ want to. It's– I'm open to the possibility or probability or whatever you want to call it. It's just better to be clinical for, like, the first, uh, step."

Chloe laces her fingers together to lay them firmly in her lap. "Right. No feelings," she says. She gives a single, decisive nod to indicate that she's fully in Clinically Detached No Feelings Mode, though the way she bites the inside of the bottom lip probably detracts from the overall image she's trying to project.

Chloe doesn't breathe. If she'd inhaled it'd've been a gasp, and if she'd exhaled it would've come out like someone had just knocked the wind out of her with a solid punch to her solar plexus.

There isn't much to see, to be honest, and Chloe's glad that Beca chose a "safe" area to show her. Still, there are two white lines marring what Chloe had always assumed was smooth skin. Three lines, actually, if she takes into account that one of the two is broken in the middle. Two-and-a-half marks standing out in sharp relief against the pale skin of her best friend's wrist.

She risks a glance up to see that Beca's still got her eyes closed, and when she looks back down she's alarmed to find that her fingertips are hovering a hair's breadth away from Beca's wrist. And somehow her noticing is what it takes for her fingers to close the remaining distance and press lightly.

Beca breathes. It's a quick inhalation through her nose, and her eyes squeeze more tightly shut while her eyebrows furrow so deeply that for just a second Chloe thinks maybe she's seeing what goes on inside of Beca when she's struggling with the chaos whipping around in her mind.

Jerking her fingers away, she tries to speak, but her words get caught on their way up.

"Don't."

"What?"

Beca licks her lips. Her eyes are open now, watching guardedly. For what, Chloe isn't sure, but she's definitely being assessed.

"You don't have to stop. Touching. You don't have to stop touching me. It's okay."

Chloe hesitates for one, two, three seconds before touching Beca's wrist again. Brushing gently across the skin and scars there, she feels the raised lines against her finger tips.

Beca's taking measured breaths now, her eyes closed again, but she looks more relaxed, less tense. When she opens her eyes, Chloe sees the sheen of unshed tears on her eyelashes.

"Oh. Beca?"

Beca shakes her head. "It's not a bad thing." She shakes her head and sniffs. "Ugh, God, I didn't think it'd affect me like this."

Chloe is still running her fingers across Beca's wrist, allowing her touch to wander further up her forearm and back down again, slow and gentle. The way she's looking at Beca must tell the other girl to offer some clarification because she does so without prompting.

"I've never let anyone touch any of those. Not, like, on _purpose_. Like… not with them _knowing_ what they were touching. Not with _me_ knowing that they knew."

Chloe only nods, not really understanding.

"It's giving me… feelings." Beca lets out a scoffing laugh, short and derisive. "I don't like feelings."

And Chloe bites the inside of her cheek to tamp down the grin she feels growing. "Oh, I know. Feelings are gross."

"So gross," Beca agrees with a nod. She sobers then, looks down to where Chloe's fingers are tracing over the scars on her wrist. "That feels good."

She waits for Beca to look up at her again before she responds.

"It's about time something did, don't you think?"


End file.
